Improbable Research

At TEDx CERN, soprano Maria Ferrante and pianist Alice Martelli perform the song “Some Galaxies”, introduced by Sergio Bertolucci (CERN’s Director for Research and Scientific Computing). The song, part of the mini-opera”Ig Grosso Kaboom,” premiered in 1997 as part of that year’s Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

This was the first of three officially Improbable parts of TEDx CERN.">

This was the first of three officially Improbable parts of TEDx CERN.

If you study jerks in a formal way, you are probably familiar with jerkmeters. Here’s a comforting treasure, the 1966 patent for one of the most beloved of all jerkmeter designs:

3,230,777 JERKMETER. Jacob Chass, Philadelphia, Pa., assignor, by mesne assignments, to Robinson-Halpern Company, West Conshohocken, Pa., a corporation of Pennsylvania Filed Dec. 17, 1962, Ser. No. 245,298 5 Claims. (CI. 73—517)

The present invention relates to a jerkmeter, and more particularly to a transducer for measuring the rate of change of acceleration. In controlling the movement of many types of moving objects, it is often desirable to not only measure the speed and acceleration of the object, but also the rate of change of acceleration. Since a change in the acceleration of a moving object results in a sudden movement or jerk, devices for measuring such a change are referred to as “jerkmeter.” To have a jerkmeter which has a long life and which is not subject to breakdown, it is desirable that the jerkmeter be free of any moving parts. Also, it is desirable that the jerkmeter be relatively small in size and inexpensive in cost.

It is an Object of the present invention to provide a novel jerkmeter….

(Thanks to investigator Stanley Eigen for bringing this to our attention.)

You may find it stressful to contemplate this study about attractiveness:

“Facial attractiveness is related to women’s cortisol and body fat, but not with immune responsiveness,” Markus J. Rantala [pictured here, below], Vinet Coetzee, Fhionna R. Moore, Ilona Skrinda, Sanita Kecko, Tatjana Krama, Inese Kivleniece and Indrikis Krams, Biology Letters, epub May 22, 2013.  The authors, variously at the University of Turku, Finland, the University of Pretoria, South Africa, the University of Dundee, Scotland, the University of Daugavpils, Latvia, and the University of Tartu, Estonia, explain:

“we photographed young Latvian women, vaccinated them against hepatitis B and measured the amount of specific antibodies produced, cortisol levels and percentage body fat. Latvian men rated the attractiveness of the women’s faces. Interestingly, in women, immune responsiveness (amount of antibodies produced) did not predict facial attractiveness. Instead, plasma cortisol level was negatively associated with attractiveness, indicating that stressed women look less attractive.”

Here is a photograph of lead author Markus Rantala on horseback:

(Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention.)

As far back as 1968, it seems, “Assertions that studying is best done at a desk rather than on a bed [were] largely untested.” Prompting Robert Gifford (who was then a research assistant at the University of California, but who is now a professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Canada) along with Robert Sommer (now Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emeritus at  UC Davis) to embark on a project to measure the effectiveness (or otherwise) of studying in bed. They conducted empirical enquiries at three prominent US universities, four state colleges and one junior college. (Students who were found to be studying on the floor, or any place other than a bed or desk were discounted from the dataset). Results were published in their paper :  The Desk or the Bed? (Personnel and Guidance Journal, Volume 46, Issue 9, May 1968, Pages: 876–878) The study revealed that – “Almost as many students were found studying on their beds as were found at their desks.” And led to the conclusion that – “There is nothing in these data to support the recommendations for studying in a straight-backed chair at a desk.” The professors had advice for the future too : “The frequent use of beds, couches, and other non-desk study areas has implications for the design and furnishing of study rooms in schools and colleges.”

Improbable is unaware of how many academic institutions followed this advice in a practical way. Please let us know, if you know, of any lecture rooms, libraries &etc that were subsequently provided with beds.

The full paper can be read here

BONUS: Over the years, other prominent academics, writers and artists have expounded the virtues of a bed-based intellectual environment. Take for example Dr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (D. Litt., Oxford). Here he is pictured in his favourite creative mode (photo courtesy New York Public Library)

How does one measure the wind speed inside a tornado? Bernie Vonnegut looked back at an early state-of-the-art method, and wrote a report called “Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed” [published in "Weatherwise," October 1975, p. 217]. Vonnegut told the world why that early method, which involved a chicken carcass and a cannon, may have been imperfect. For this achievement, Bernie Vonnegut was posthumously awarded the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for meteorology.

Vonnegut was a scientist — by all accounts a good one. A tribute written the year Bernie Vonnegut died says: “Bernard Vonnegut is best known, however, for his discovery on November 14, 1946 at the General Electric Research Laboratory of the effectiveness of silver iodide as ice-forming nuclei that has been widely used to seed clouds in efforts to augment rainfall.”

This research is thought to have inspired his younger brother Kurt, who wrote many stories involving science (see especially the concept of Ice-nine).

BONUS: Vonnegut also wrote about The Smell of Tornadoes.

BONUS: How do you measure a tornado?